


(even perfect plans have) perfect flaws

by ladysugarquill



Category: Death Note (Live Action TV)
Genre: Chained Heat, Hurt/Comfort, It’s not stalking if you’re the world’s best detective, M/M, Sleep Deprivation, The handcuffs are staying, Watching Someone Sleep, welp L has a foot fetish even in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 21:11:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17050634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysugarquill/pseuds/ladysugarquill
Summary: It was not in L's nature to question his own motives. He really should.(or, three times L watched Light sleep, and one time Light was awake)





	(even perfect plans have) perfect flaws

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kyrilu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/gifts).



_So Light is home_ , are Soichiro Yagami's thoughts as he steps into the house he barely sees anymore. He'd asked to go fetch something or other now Sayu was out, but wasn't supposed to linger. Then again, his son had been acting strange since L’s death. He tries to hide it from everybody, but L’s death had affected him deeply.

Knocking on the door to Light’s room, he lets himself in. There is no piece of paper jammed in anymore. Light is sitting in his old bed – his bed, still, even if he hadn’t slept in it in months. His movements are sluggish when Soichiro enters. He seemed to have been staring at space.

"Dad." He makes hhis best impression of the young man he used to be. "I'm sorry, I lost track of the time. Let's go"

"Light." Soichiro hands him one of L's devices. "L left this message for you.”

 

L's face is blinding in the room's darkness. “You have defeated me again. Congratulations. You will by now have seen the last message I left for the investigation team.” L’s lips quirked in that way of his, just the corners up. “This message, however, is for Light-kun only.”

“As a detective I vowed to stop criminals and bring them to justice everybody has a mission they’re born with., and that was mine. However”, his eyes pierce Light in such a way it's hard to imagine it's not the real L on the other side, but a copy made of pixels; “the rest of the team wouldn’t’ understand this, but this game of ours, it was fun. It is an honor to have been defeated by you.”

 

***

 

  _three_

 

“No bias my ass. He’s only watching Light-kun."

 

***

 

  _two_

 

It was not in L Lawliet's nature to question his own motives. Other people’s, he cuts open and examines. But not his own.

He is the best detective on the planet – all three of them, in fact - a master of logical deduction, who could examine every situation and catalogue people as so much data. There’s no need to examine oneself when his every thought is logical.

Light–kun is slumped against a corner of the cell. Without his usual shirt or jacket he looks small in his black tee shirt and pants, like an abandoned doll. His arms are tied behind his back, his knees drawn up to hold him in something close to a sitting position on the cot. One of his feet (thin and sinewy, L’s brain notes for no reason at all) rubs against the other, maybe to fight The cold. Behind his overlong fringe, his eyelids are fluttering.

For once, L’s let Light-kun sleep.

The chains around Light’s wrists and ankles have been designed to make sleeping as uncomfortable as possible. Lack of sleep, plus irregular meal times and no external source to tell the time, is an effective way to break a prisoner’s will, to make them more pliable to questioning.

Not that it was needed. This must have been the first time in L’s life he was trying to prove the guilt of a prisoner who’d already confessed. He’d never seen a prisoner so eager to confess. That was the problem. He kept interrogating Light, waking him up with random questions as soon as he seemed to fall asleep, but all he got were the same answers he'd gotten before the shackles were closed. After all, Light wanted to know the answers to these questions as much as L did.

Dizziness and disorientation, as well as disordered thoughts. It was 16 days into Light’s confinement and according to L's observations it had started to affect him.

Sleep deprivation was a wonderful tool, but it has its drawbacks. Under it it was harder to lie, but also harder to tell the truth. Only a skilled investigator could gleam one from the other, and L was the best. If he kept watch over Light long enough, he’d know. If he stared for long enough at light’s still form, curled up on himself on the cell floor, if he committed himself to very detail of Light’s behavior, if he plucked every thought from his brilliant, disoriented brain, then he would _know_.

L had sent Aizawa-san away to do something superfluous, taking his silent –noisy- disapproval of L’s actions with him. He too suspected Light-kun, but disagreed with L’s methods. So he’d sent him to chase ghosts, and now it‘s just L. And Light-kun.

Light-kun, who pulls up his long legs, curling into himself, a bony human ball against the wall. Light’s pants ride up, so his ankles are exposed. Such funny body parts, ankles, bony and awkward, so undignified. L squishes the packet he's eating, tastes sugar on his tongue. A drop of sugary goo leaks out, and L licks his fingers, thinking. His eyes trace the line of Light’s throat as his head falls forward onto his knees, hiding it from the camera’s eyes.

Yagami Light is Kira, L is sure. He is a murderer, a delusional madman who’s already erased hundreds of human beings with clinical precision in pursuit of his own selfish goals.

He is also _intensely fascinating_

Maybe that’s why he feels compelled to stay with him. Light has to be locked up. It’s a good plan, and even accounting for the possibility that light is Kira and has set this up for his own benefit it is still the best opportunity the team has to uncover the truth. It pure, dispassionate logic, and yet. And yet L feels he should be there to witness it. To make sure Light is not alone.

Up until now theirs felt like a game of endurance, a volleying of challenges and responses, adapting to each other’s games, to see who was too slow, who’d miss the ball, who’d lose. But right now, Light’s helpless form makes him feel he’s the only one playing.

L Lawliet can’t abandon Light-kun to his suffering, even when L’s the cause of it.

It’s never his own motives he questions. He’s starting to believe maybe he should.

 

***

 

  _one_

 

L’s sleeping tent sits empty. Its owner is lying instead in one of two futons set up by Watari under the tall paneled windows to accommodate the fact that his ward is currently handcuffed to a suspected mass murderer.

The only lights in the empty headquarters of the Kira Countermeasures Office are the squares of distorted moonlight spilling over the small raised platform, the dim gray of computers on idle and blinking color lights, everything ready to spring to life at the first sign of activity (at the first sign of Kira).

And likethe collection of machines that form an extension of his professional self, L is sitting on his futon like a cat caught in mid-stretch, legs sprawled all over; his attention had been diverted to the form beside him, sleeping peacefully until twelve minutes ago.

Light-kun had started trashing in his sleep twelve - thirteen minutes ago now. His breathing had become irregular, his limbs moving erratically; under L’s stare, he curls into a ball, fists clenched on the duvet, yet breathing fast. He makes unintelligible sounds, and then-

“Dad, no! Stop it! DAD!”

A heavy, unpleasant feeling takes hold of L.

“Light-kun, you are dreaming” He raises his hand, gingerly touching Light’s shoulder.

L’s touch is feather-light, but Light opens is eyes as if hit. For a second he is frozen stiff, not even breathing; then he seems to register L’s figure looming over him, reaching out.

Light’s eyes widen, L has time to register his pupils contracting before he is hit by a flailing arm; Light scrambles to get away, forgetting the handcuffs that joins his wrist to L’s; the pull of the chain unbalances them, pitches L forward towards his frantic prisoner. Light swings again - the chain rattles, they both narrowly avoid getting hit by the whiplash. L manages to disentangle himself from the mess of limbs, and catches Light’s wrists, brings his face close to his.

“Light-kun,” he says, as calmly as he can manage through his own adrenaline rush. “It was a dream.”

His face is covered in sweat and his fringe sticks to his forehead; there are tears running down his cheeks still. L softens the hold on his wrists; the chain is somewhere under them and is digging into his leg. Light takes a stuttering breath, shuts his eyes as if it will stop the tears. He’s shuddering yet taut. L tries to move away, but Light grabs his handcuffed hand like a drowning man would a piece of driftwood, like L’s hold is the only thing stopping him from sinking back into the nightmare - he, who’s also what caused it in the first place.

They stay like this for a long time.

Slowly, Light’s eyes focus. His shudders subside, he releases his death grip on L’s hand.

“Ryuuga”, he mutters. His voice is hoarse, even though he didn’t use it since the episode started. “I’m fine.”

“Light-kun.” L watches him wipe his tears roughly with the heel of his hand, avoiding his eyes, wordlessly trying to erase the whole thing. “It was a necessary deception.” He offers in lieu of an apology, and if it sounds weak he won’t admit it even to himself.

“I know.” Apparently sensing L’s discomfort, he finally looks up. “Ryuuga, _I know_. You needed to make absolutely sure I am not Kira.” _And that’s done now_ , his stare seems to imply. L finds himself thoroughly distracted by the freckles on his nose and says nothing. Light lets out a huff. “I need to sleep. And so do you, Ryuuga.”

“I can function optimally without sleeping.” Light snorts, sounding more like himself.

“Suit yourself. Good night, Ryuuga.”

Light straightens his futon and gets in, is soon fast asleep. L lies down next to him.

His right arm, still dragging a chain, lies between them. The phantom feeling of Light’s hands, vice-like on him. Out of nowhere L feels the urge to touch those fingers. he reaches out, so very slowly; hesitates for a second, then presses his fingertips to Light’s.

They are soft and squishy, Light’s fingertips. Warm. He can feel Light’s heartbeat through the skin, steadily chugging along. His eyes travel up, through Light’s arm, his shoulder, his neck, jaw, lips, huffing softly in sleep, and he thinks of soft squishy warm flesh to flesh.

He hopes he is wrong, as vehemently as in his waking thoughts he needs to be right.

 

***

 

  _zero_

 

 If L were a charitable man he’s blame it on the discovery that monsters are real. L is not a charitable man.

 It’s been a week since Yotsuba and something In Light-kun feels strangely – blank. He’s cold and dry in a way he never was before. Oh, he’ll answer questions and offer theories like a perfect non-Kira-being unofficial sort-of investigator, but it’s a particularly expressive mask he needs a conscious effort to put on and won’t bother when he thinks no one is looking.

 L was always looking. And Light-kun used to be a better liar.

 Apart from the soft whirr of air fans in the background and the column of smoke rising unhurriedly on the other side of the window, the office of the KCO at the basement of the Oriental Hotel is, for once, still and silent. Everybody was exhausted, so L sent them to sleep, preferably in their own houses and not underfoot.

 Day and night are indistinct in their underground bunker and Watari had dimmed the lights in a useless attempt to make L sleep as well. L doesn’t. Instead he stares idly at the computer screen, absentmindedly sorting data that will lead nowhere, fitting them in piece like puzzle pieces that just make a black square.

 Light hasn’t gone home either. He’s sitting next to L, resting his cheek on his fist, staring at his own screen as he scrolls down names and numbers, expression unreadable.  He’s taken off his jacket and the tendons on his forearm twitch as he rolls the scrolling wheel.

 He looks very different from the Light Yagami L met at he university. In his gray long sleeved tee-shirt and black pants, it gave one the eerie feeling that all the outer layers had been peeled away, leaving only the essence of Light, and that was steel. This, as L had often pointed out, had also been his doing.

 “Stop pretending to work.”

 “I do not understand what you mean, Light-kun,” L drawls, mouth quirking, ready to rile Light up.

 “You re not even touching the computer.”

 “I don’t need the computer, Light-kun. I can manage the data” he shifts forward, big b black eyes staring unblinkingly at Light; “with my _mind_. Light-kun heaves an exasperated sigh. His shoulders sag; it’s the most genuine emotion L has gotten from him recently.

 “You’re staring.” There’s only one answer for that.

 “Light-kun is interesting to look at”. And really, he shouldn’t be making this so easy.

 The younger man stares daggers into him; nobody conveys exasperation with a better face than Light Yagami, his mouth a straight line of disapproval that makes him remarkably resemble his father.

 So L surges forward and kisses him – softly, sweetly. Light’s lips are spongy, like freshly made cake and just as warm.  Then he moves away, peers intently at Light through his black fringe, gauging his reaction.

It is a test, of course, everything is with them; but it’s also-

not. 

For the span of a heartbeat Light-kun doesn’t move. He then breathes: _Okay_ , and he is on top of L, straddling him where he sits. His hand wraps around L’s throat, and kisses him hard. The high backed chair swivels with the force of it, and Light’s mouth Is hot and wet on his; his tongue brushes L’s lips and he yields to it, letting the kiss deepen. Light’s hand pushes him  against the back of the chair, bodies pressing together, his other hand gripping the leather behind L.

Light moves his attentions to L’s jaw and neck, his tongue hard and implacable, tracing dizzying labyrinths on L’s skin. Light’s thumb gently caresses his Adam’s apple, while the rest of his fingers dig into his spine, a constant reminder of how much L’s at his mercy.

L is intensely aware of everything around him. Light’s body pressing against him, mouth hot on his. His heartbeat is rabbit-fast, his brain filled with an electric buzz.  He’s pinned in place, he has a murderer’s hand around his throat, digging into the flesh. The part of his brain still capable of rational thought points out how less than ideal his position is, but the rest of him is too lost in the twists of Light’s tongue to care.

Like he’s reading his mind (and perhaps he is, perhaps they’ve watched each other so much and for so long their minds are joined) Light-kun lets go of his throat and L immediately misses it. He feels fingers on his white shirt, undoing the buttons one by one, and hot breath following, kissing a trail down his neck, across his collarbone, down his chest. He feels Light slide back, and they overbalance; L hooks his arms around Light to keep him from falling. It’s painful to hold him up, he’d fall if L let go.

He doesn’t let go.

Light’s tongue, flat, wet and scorching, reverses tracks; licks a stripe up his sternum, the hollow of his throat, up his neck, until reaches his mouth, and there it flicks, disdainfully.

Light moves away and stares at L. His cheeks are red and his hair messed up, but his gaze is level - dark, intense. A challenge. _Your move._

L knows what’s his move. This is the comfortable rhythm of their game, up the stakes and try to keep up. 

So he presses his palm against the bulge in Light's trousers and is pleased to hear the younger man let out a sigh through swollen lips. He unfastens Light's trousers, his other hand ghosting along the small of Light's back. He takes Light in hand and strokes, annoyingly soft. Light makes an almost imperceptible soft keening sound that pierces L like he imagines a bullet would. 

He can't see anything, with their bodies pressed together, but he pictures Light’s body as he saw him in person for the first time – the long, wiry limbs, round shoulders, taut stomach, jutting hipbones.

Light’s eyes are closed, his head thrown back, like he doesn’t care what L may do to him. Like he will take whatever L deems necessary. L frees his own erection, and grabs them both in hand – the feeling of hot flesh on hot flesh almost overwhelming – begins to stroke in earnest, from tip to base and back, circling his thumb over the heads. Panting, Light’s head falls onto L’s shoulder as he thrust into L’s hand. L moves faster, trapped, always trapped, between them.

“L”, Light sighs against his throat and then, “ _please”_.

That small word, breathed in his ear, is enough to make him fall apart; he comes, hard, and in a hazy daze feels Light’s orgasm follow him.

 A moment, frozen, where there’s only their heavy breathing and stuttering heartbeats. Then Light’s arms leave the back of L’s chair to wrap around the detective’s shoulders instead. The grip is vice-like and painful, as Light’s forehead stubbornly pushes against L’s chest, presses into him until L is sure it’ll bruise. 

 “Light-kun...”

 “Don’t,” is the muffled response breathed against his collarbone.

 L’s arms enfold Light, stroke his spine, tangle in his copper hair, and the thought materializes, fully formed, logical, inevitable.

_I will save him._

 It may cost him his life, it probably will, and he will do it anyway.

 Everybody has a mission in this world. L thought he knew what his was, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe the true reason he was put into this earth was to try and save young, brilliant, beautiful Light from his own evil. Or maybe neither he nor Light nor even Kira are, in the grand scheme of things, important at all, just tiny humans trying to capture sand that’s slipping between their fingers.

 But his shoulders hurt where Light is holding him and if there’s something in this world L Lawliet is, is _really bloody stubborn_. 

 

***

 

He’s left a message just for Light. In it he says a lot of things, but only a few are important. He can’t say what he wants to say, it’s too big and it’s too late. But he says the next best thing.

“I’m still your friend.” He can’t decide if friend is to small a word or to big a one, but it’s done now, it's all they they have. And no matter what else happens, if there’s a heaven or a hell, or a special pit they are both headed, this has always been true. It's L's desperate hope that Light will believe it too.


End file.
